Skandia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2008)

Skandia's logo

Skandia is a Swedish insurance company that was started in 1855. It has operations in Europe, Latin America, Asia and Australia. In 2003 the operations in North America, American Skandia, was acquired by Prudential Financial. It also operates an internet bank called Skandiabanken.

Skandia is one of the world's leading independent providers of quality solutions for long-term savings and investments. They offer products and services that cater for various financial needs and security. Skandia pioneered the "MultiManager" approach, which has now been adopted by most life insurance providers.

Skandia's largest operation, in terms of new business and profit, is the United Kingdom which launched in 1979. Their UK headquarters is Skandia House in Southampton. Nick Poyntz-Wright is currently the UK and Offshore Group Chief Executive Officer.

In 2005 South African/British financial services group Old Mutual launched a $6.5bn (£3.6bn) bid to acquire majority control of Skandia, which was met with resistance from some of Skandia's shareholders and directors. On February 3, 2006 Old Mutual completed its acquisition of Skandia, which was subsequently delisted from the Stockholm and London stock exchanges. [1]

[edit] Rebranding

Skandia's old blue "umbrella" logo

Following Old Mutual's takeover, Skandia announced it would be "going green" and underwent a rebranding from January 2008. The company announced that it would take 18 months for the rebranding to complete, with the UK and offshore division being first. The old logo was replaced with a new one to be more in-line with Old Mutual's colours.

Skandia also decided that it would no longer be the sponsoring Cowes Week after 14 years, with it's last year of sponsorship being 2009. The company cited other more national events to sponsor rather than a localized one. [2]

[edit] Criticisms

Controversy surrounded Skandia in recent years, mostly due to illegal internal affairs with the subsidiary Skandia Liv, and for having provided executives with subsidized apartments in Stockholm. The involved executives are among others Lars-Eric Petersson and Ulf Spång. It was discovered in late 2003 that executives at Skandia had embezzled 13 billion Swedish kronor. Subsequently, the board had to resign and in 2006, Lars-Eric Petersson was sentenced to two years in prison. The case was appealed to a higher court.

On 19 December 2007, the Court of Appeal dismissed all charges against Lars-Eric Petersson.

The charges by the prosecutor proceeded from the prerequisite that the payments from Skandia’s bonus program, called Wealthbuilder, to the beneficiaries were limited to an amount of SEK 300 million during the time period 1 January 1998 – 31 December 1999. According to the prosecutor, Lars-Eric Petersson had, without the consent of the Board, removed the cap on the bonus programme by signing a document named Appendix 3, and thus causing payments of additionally approx. SEK 156 million to the beneficiaries.

According to the Court of Appeal, the prosecutor was not able to prove that the limitation for Wealthbuilder was still in force when Lars-Eric Petersson signed Appendix 3 in December 2000. The charges were therefore dismissed. (Translation of the press release from the Svea Court of Appeal)